Experiencing the Classroom (Assignment 3A)

I taught a government lesson for an AP Government class at Northview High School in the Covina-Valley Unified School District.  I taught the lesson on identifying media influence on public opinion.

The lesson plan was designed to provide students with the opportunity to take risks and share their thoughts and understanding of the content without feeling anxious or self-conscious.  This was especially important as we learned about the influence of media on politics and our perception of what is happening in the United States and the rest of the world, because so many of the issues we face are emotionally charged.  With this in mind, the primary goal of the lesson was for students to learn how to identify messages within the media they consume every day. 

I used a graphic organizer to help students keep their thoughts and understandings clear and concise, differentiating between fact and opinion.  As we examined the issues, the students were very adept at accomplishing this task, and there were a few instances that students actually had some “light bulb moments,” with students expressing understanding of the concept and figuring out why it was important.  All teachers love to hear a student say, “Ahhh… Now I get it!”

  

What worked?

The students responded well to the jigsaw learning portion of the lesson.  Students were sitting in groups, each of which was given a propaganda poster from World War II and the group was tasked with identifying the message of the poster.  Some students struggled with this activity, not sure what some of the messages were.  However, through group discussion and analysis they felt comfortable enough to present their understanding to individuals from other groups as they split up into 4 large groups and each person in the group was given 30 seconds to teach the rest of their large group about the message they found. 

Overall students enjoyed the activity, and found it an easy means of transitioning from the noise and chaos outside the classroom to a more controlled atmosphere inside the classroom.  As I walked around discussing the various posters with the groups, I was able to assess which students struggled to pick out the messages, and who struggled to see the connection between the media and the government, though there were only two of these students.  This was a useful activity in pre-assessing the understanding of students that a relationship does exist between the media and the government and it was an easy transition into discussion and instruction regarding the necessity of a free and unhindered press in America today.

Students enjoyed the clips we watched and did well identifying different possible biases within each report.  Ms. Samuel commented on how well they were worked into the overall idea of identifying the relationship between two bodies who are meant to be separate, one checking the other.  They were generally good at removing emotion and taking an analytical approach to the activity in seeking to understand how the media can influence the way we perceive things.

Pre-assessment/Warm-up Comparison

This warm-up was more effective for the students than the one used in assignment 2B.  They seemed to handle the group discussion and analysis of a still image better than the short video clip used in the previous assignment.  They liked having the video, it was more entertaining to them, but this was a more functional and useful warm-up activity.  This was not a huge surprise, given the amount of information generally available in a 2-3 minute video clip, versus having 3-4 minutes to look at and analyze a single image. 

What did not work?

The time constraints determined in the lesson plan were too broad.  Simply breaking down how much time to spend on what I was to present and how much time was going to be spent on student-centered activities was not very helpful.  I found myself losing track of time and getting distracted with questions that were only marginally relevant to the lesson, and the purpose of the lesson.  This was confirmed as I asked students after class what they learned, and many remembered the tangents the discussion went on more than the prepared portion of the lesson.  I understand that this is going to happen sometimes, but I need to be able to bring it back to the point of the lesson more quickly.  The time aspect is something that I struggled with on my professional dispositions survey; however, this experience showed me that I need to be even more vigilant about how I organize the time of the lesson to remind myself where I should be, and to impress upon myself the limited amount of time available.

What can I do better?

I taught the lesson two times, allowing me to reflect following each class experience.  In this class, the lesson drifted off on two separate tangents.  I allowed the students questions that were not particularly relevant to the lesson and take the discussion too far into the background politics of what was happening at the time.  Student participation is critical to the success of any lesson, especially when it is relevant to the subject matter, but in this case it took us off on a tangent and made it difficult to bring the conversation back around to the main idea of the lesson.  I will recognize this earlier in the discussion and direct it back to the main idea of the day.

Assessment

As previously discussed, the formative assessment was very functional and worked to identify the general level of understanding of the students regarding the influence media can have on our perceptions and understandings of events in the world.

The summative assessment was functional and fulfilled its purpose of students being able to identify the influence media can have on public opinion.  The assignment was modified from its original format, allowing students to choose propaganda from any period of American history, instead of being limited to World War II propaganda.  Students were also asked to identify how the message presented in the propaganda might influence the public.  Overall, I found the assessment to be both useful and intellectually challenging for the students.  I think the added freedom in the summative assessment increased the overall quality of the students’ work.

  

I learned a great deal about my own teaching in this experience, and appreciated the opportunity to figure out some areas in which I need to improve.  I felt more confident in my teaching than I had anticipated, and was blessed to teach a great group of kids with a real appetite for learning.  I will continue to improve as I prepare for an internship and work to identify areas of weakness, with the goal of turning them into strengths.

Class Warm-up (Assignment 2B)

I used the pre-assessment from my fourth lesson of the week, focusing on the application of the knowledge acquired through lecture and independent learning activities through the first three days of the week.  I borrowed an AP government class at a local high school where I substitute teach regularly to pilot test a warm-up designed for a college prep class.  This was done to not only test the warm-up activity, but to also get feedback from the students about the utility and likeability of the activity, as well as the teacher regarding the appropriateness of the activity for a general education class.  The teacher allowed me to teach a complete lesson, providing the students with an opportunity to review something they had already learned about, as well as take in the information from a second perspective.

For the warm-up, we reviewed the general history of the influence American media has had on politics through the development and use of the telegraph, the radio, and television.  We also reviewed some of the regulations and restriction that influence what media is, and is not, allowed to report in relation to elections and politics.  This review was completed through a series of questions with students answering questions on these events.  Students completed the warm-up watching a video clip of commentary on a recent Supreme Court decision, looking for bias in how the story was being covered.  A secondary objective of this warm-up was to lead the students to consider the importance of understanding the source from which they are consuming news and information.  Students were provided with a graphic organizer to write down any thoughts and impressions they had as they watched the video, as well as questions to help them identify any possible bias after they watching the clip.

It was fun to teach and interact with the students.  They were very excited about the activity and enjoyed getting to use the things they have learned in class.  Though they might not have a complete understanding of what various motives are they influence what makes the news and how it is reported, they enjoyed the opportunity to try.  One adjustment I might make to the rubric would be to be more rewarding of students’ attempts to analyze what they were seeing and hearing.  The rubric was more appropriate for students who are more practiced at identifying the bias in media; it would be more appropriate for a third or fourth attempt at the activity.

As I talked with the teacher after class, she really liked the idea of the activity because it is easily adaptable as politics and news change.  We discussed the feasibility of adapting it to a general education class, as long as it stays simple in content and I come up with more questions to direct the discussion with the students.  One area of improvement would be to have more questions beforehand in order to lead the discussion more with students.  They may not be as prepared as the AP students were to pick out the ideas and identify the bias, so there may need to be more teacher guidance for them.  Whether that is true of any particular class is of less importance than the need to be sufficiently prepared to meet the needs of any particular group of students.   

Overall, it was a good experience because of the feedback from both the students and the teacher.  Using this lesson warm-up and class activity will be much more useful in future teaching opportunities.